Tissue Culture Essay

1520 Words7 Pages
Plant tissue culture, which is also known as micropropagation is a technique that transferred plant cells, organs, tissue from donor plants onto media supplemented with nutrients and growth hormones in container. Typically, this involves culturing excised meristematic tissue on a special medium that encourages axillary bud development. The new shoots are then separated and cultured, and the cycle is repeated until finally the shoots are transferred to a medium that promotes root development, to produce plantlets. This is possible as plants have the ability to develop into and entire organisms from a single cell. This ability is known as totipotency. Plant cell shows high totipotency in contrast to animal. Thus, plant tissue culture is extensively used in agriculture, horticulture, and forestry as special genotype can be bred and maintained. The process is rapid, and plants can be kept disease-free. It also allows the production of many genetically identical plants using relatively small amount of space, supplies and time. As mention before, the explants are transferred to a media which is supplemented with nutrients and growth hormone. This is because the plants growing in vitro are heterotrophic as they cannot synthesize their own food material, which is in contrast to the plants growing in its natural surrounding. Therefore, plant tissue culture media need to supplement all essential minerals, carbohydrate source (usually sucrose), and also plant growth regulator and vitamins. Growth and morphogenesis of plant tissue in vitro are largely regulated by the composition of the culture media. The formulation of medium containing the nutritional components for promoting optimal growth may vary depending on a particular species although the basic requirement of cultured plant tissue are similar to those of whole plant. Media compositions are thus formulated considering

More about Tissue Culture Essay

Open Document